The present invention relates to tuning blocks for guitars with floating bridge tremolos and more particularly to a method and device for selectively and quickly changing the tuning of such a guitar.
Many modern electric guitars are equipped with a floating bridge tremolo for producing a vibrato effect. Floating bridge tremolos have a tremolo bridge and a tremolo bar, and are operated by selectively depressing and releasing the tremolo bar that pivots the tremolo bridge, thereby changing the tension of the strings as a group. When the vibrato effect is no longer desired, the tremolo bar is released, the tremolo bridge returns to its original position, and the guitar strings return to their original tension.
When performing in front of an audience, sometimes it is necessary for a musician to change the tuning of the guitar for a particular song. Under these conditions it is impractical to go through the time consuming process of retuning the guitar. Instead, some musicians simply use another guitar that has been pretuned for the song. This solution is obviously costly and many musicians cannot afford the extra guitars needed for a complete repertoire, forcing them to change their song selections, or to accept less than optimum tuning.
As an alternative solution, some musicians use guitars having floating bridge tremolos that are equipped with devices that fix or limit the pivoting motion of the tremolo bridge to thereby change the tension of the strings as a group and thus the overall tuning of the guitar. However, the change in the tuning of each string of the guitar varies with its thickness, and devices that change the tension of all the strings by the same amount may place one or more of the strings out of tune because of its different thickness (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,882,967 issued to Rose on Nov. 28, 1989). As a result, if the musician does not have another guitar tuned for a particular song and instead uses a guitar having a retuning device that adjusts the tension of the strings as a group, he must compromise fine tuning for the general tuning of the guitar and hope that the audience does not recognize the flaw.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel method and device for tuning a guitar having a floating bridge tremolo that quickly changes the tune of the guitar strings both as a group and individually.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a novel method and device for tuning a guitar in which the tuning of the guitar can be selectively preset for a particular song.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a novel method and device for tuning a guitar that can be quickly and easily installed on the tremolo.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a novel method and device for tuning a guitar in which a tuning block is inserted between the tremolo bridge and the body of the guitar and in which the tension of individual strings may be unequally set upon insertion.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a novel method and device for tuning a guitar in which a variable thickness tuning block for equally adjusting the tension of the strings also has a selectively engaged tuning bar for simultaneously unequally adjusting the tension of each string.
These and many other objects and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent to one skilled in the art to which the invention pertains from a perusal of the claims, the appended drawings, and the following detailed description of preferred embodiments.